Time to go Train in the Mountains

I was recently thinking about how much I suck at drawing, image editing, web design, and other forms of useful art, when I realized there’s a simple way to turn that all around: training in the mountains. Mountain training is a surefire way to get better at anything: martial arts, kendo, ninjutsu, homosexuality, mountain climbing, pokemon, football, rugby, boxing, baseball, and tennis.

You know why the K-ON band sucked so hard? Instead of training in the mountains, they wasted their time (and ours) by “training” at the beach. K-ON’s only funny non-Krauser joke: the notion that beach training might help anyone accomplish anything. Kojima from One Outs used to train at the beach, but that didn’t help him get better at baseball.

Then he went to the mountains to chop wood, the most effective training for anything. One thousand logs were all it took to cultivate the mind, the body, and the soul (and we must always cultivate the soul).

Beach training might have been effective back in 1805 when Judge Tompkins in Pierson v. Post described the beach as follows:

The declaration stated that Post, being in possession of certain dogs and hounds under his command, did, “upon a certain wild and uninhabited, unpossessed waste land, called the beach, find and start one of those noxious beasts called a fox,” and whilst there hunting, chasing and pursuing the same with his dogs and hounds, and when in view thereof, Pierson, well knowing the fox was so hunted and pursued, did, in the sight of Post, to prevent his catching the same, kill and carry it off.

Sadly, the modern beachscape is a commercial candy land wherein the only noxious beasts are fat chicks in bikinis (which no amount of training can overcome). Fat chicks aside, if there’s something at the beach, there’s a more brutal, fiendish version in the mountains:

Let’s not forget Tengu, Yetis, Abominable Snowmen, and other mountain creatures too ferocious for the beach.

But Baka-Raptor, what about sharks?

There are fewer than 100 shark attacks each year, and less than a third result in fatalities. You’re more likely to die by suffocation from a cave-in. Where will you find caves? The mountains. Even if you don’t suffocate in a cave, you’re stuck with the death threats of oxygen deficiency, iodine deficiency, and, until someone can prove otherwise, deficiencies of all other elements in rows VIA-VIIA of the periodic table. If you can survive the mountains, you can survive anything.

49 people love sucking up to me

It’s decided; I shall train in the mountains to better myself in the art of mountain making. Then I shall use my newly trained mountain making skills to build a better mountain to train in. And so the cycle shall continue until I transcend the mortal realm.

I live in an archipelago, beaches everywhere. Training there sucks, except for kicks from the crane stance, which is pretty useless in a fight. So I did not even try to learn to swim and went straight to the mountains to spar with Lavos Spawns. Now look at me, an expectant father. With hard work and guts I knocked up my wife. Even at my advanced age my sperm is mightier than Time Devourers.

Not really, look at the Besaid Aurochs from Final Fantasy X, they trained at the beach and didn’t win a game until they got a new guy that trained somewhere OTHER than at the beach! And where did the Luca Goers go? To the temple located in the hills of Kilika, albeit not a mountian, but better than the beach!

I don’t know. Something’s really off, yet I can’t put my finger on it. The last time I went into the mountains to train for four years, I ended up with a university diploma instead of superpowers. I feel cheated (sort of).

I have woods and mountains right behind my house. Needless to say, I practically live in the woods/mountains and, believe it or not, I have literally, actually, and truthfully, trained in the mountains.

Now, usually, a statement like this might be a joke, but in this case, it’s 100% true. I have trained in the mountains, running, climbing, jumping (across gaps/off cliffs with and without water below), shit I’ve even tried my luck tossing boulders. Why did I train in the woods? Well, besides the reasons that you listed, my gym membership had run out, and I didn’t have money. Personally, I’ll take training in the woods to training at the gym any day. Show me a cliff, and I’ll climb it without ropes. Fuck this, I wanna go in he woods right now.

There is something that is missing though, Ippo and friends trained at the beach at least two times as i can remember (and got better), but the main motivation to beach training is the non-fat ladies in bikinis =)

But of course i agree with you baka-raptor, mountain training is far superior than beach training, as the best training for Ippo and friends were in the mountains when Takamura had to fight with a ferocious bear and kicked the bear ass !!!

@Yi: Please note that my knowledge of mountain-related homosexuality is not from personal experience. I haven’t even seen the movie, but it’s my understanding that when they came down the mountain they were a lot gayer than when they first climbed up.

@Glo: I never had woods close to my house, but every so often my father would take me to the woods at the state park after 6PM so we wouldn’t have to pay to get in.

@digitalboy: Forest training isn’t a bad alternative to mountain training. Forests are full of noxious beasts and there’s plenty of wood for the chopping. However, there’s way too much oxygen in low-altitude forests. Training in oxygen-deficient environments will make you much stronger when you return to sea level.

@Laguna: That reminds me, mountain training is ten times as effective when you have an old man to coach you, preferably through verbal and physical abuse.

@Gunstray: Is it immune to water-based attacks? That’s generally how I fight robots, even the ones modeled after aquatic life forms.

You forgot that training in the mountains can also make you a better magical girl.

Beach training can be effective if you make yourself actually jump in the ocean at places like the ocean side of Cape Cod or some of the northern beaches in California. I do this as much as possible – the only trick is to try to swim against the rip currents. The water is quite cold, and its a really good work-out.

That video was sorely in need of Sabin/Mash to Suplex the Yeti just like how he suplexed a Train straight from the underworld. How does he do that? Oh that’s right, he was training in the mountains before he joins your party.

My equivalent of training in the mountains is going outside and talking to people. If you can survive talking to people outside of the internet, you can survive anything. Plus the sun’s heat is a bitch in Spring/Summer here, you might have heard of the epic duststorms which badass Sydney-siders faced head on by going surfing right in the middle of when it was happening.

Oh, and Baka-Raptor, as part of my GAR/Sucking-up training, I made you this picture with my new digital Fujifilm camera:

It contains the awesomeness of a Lego Studios set Lego T-Rex being cheered on by Yotsuba as it prepares to devour its Gungan prey, Jar-Jar Binks. I thought that since I had a Lego dinosaur I would try and share my appreciation of your work by throwing it in one of my pop-art photos.

My next mountains training will be cleaning my room in a GAR manner so that it looks nice and has an appropriately clean workspace that’s not too cluttered for figure photography.

What about surfing?? (which all ninjas, pirates, and prehistoric reptiles would agree is awesome) No amount of wood chopping could challenge you like tsunamis that wipe out entire nations (surely the only training that may present a challenge to you).

@SNAG: Technically speaking, talking to people isn’t mountain training. Unless you’re talking to people in the mountains, in which case it’s most certainly mountain training. Though I suppose I should take your interpretation as a compliment. It’s the sign of any great author that his words are interpreted metaphorically.

@Epi: I’m sure that can be arranged. Mountain training is for boys and girls of all ages.

Truly. Baki Hanma improved his raw bear-eating skills, his wood-chopping skills, his cliff-diving skills, and his supernatural-monster-ape beating-the-crap-out-of skills in the mountains. That’s good enough for me.

Dude, not to kiss ass, but your posts are just so entertaining. I like reading about what you think about these sort of things. That’s very true. How many anime shows have people training in the mountains…? A LOT. And jeez, was full metal panic REALLY like that…? If so, dayam, I need to get my ass to watch it. And I never really played the earlier final fantasies, but that battle looked pretty intense. COME OUT WITH ANOHTER REVIEW!!!!! or something pleaseeeee lol.

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